


the hell where youth and laughter go

by seraf



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Depression, Introspection, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 15:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18741418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: weave yourself a home of lies. turn yourself into steel. make them uncomfortable to look at you too long. wear it on your sleeve. grow.a brief study on some of the characters in drv3 who have dealt with suicidal ideation, from kokichi's perspective of them.





	the hell where youth and laughter go

if there’s a _right_ way to go about this, kokichi thinks he might be doing it all wrong.

 

korekiyo makes it obvious enough in his own way. most of them are too uncomfortable to look at him for too long, their eyes gliding over him or lingering on his too-feminine features or strange mask or unique uniform to think of any questions for the person inside. ( one of them, at least. ) he’s a novelty, a haunted house - something you might approach out of curiousity, but would be glad to leave.

 

kokichi has to admit, it even works on him a little bit. he tends to give the anthropologist a wide berth.

 

but you don’t say things like _being a tad insensitive is important for survival. it helps one avoid suicidal thoughts._ without having some experience in the matter, and you didn’t wrap yourself up in that many layers of clothing and bandages if you had nothing to hide, and you didn’t talk about death with what looked like a peaceful smile if you weren’t in part looking forwards to it.

 

he doesn’t look into korekiyo’s story. doesn’t ask about the few conversations he overhears him and shuichi having - his dead sister and how she had picked his talent and his uniform and his friends and the length of his hair and how he acted. doesn’t want to know about where his fascination with thanatology comes from.

 

the closest he comes is when he hears the discussion of field work, hears him talking about being brought within an inch of death and speaking about it with a sort of elation. wonders for the rest of the night how he’d phrase a question of _are you alright_ without arousing suspicion or shattering his well-built facade.

 

but he doesn’t look into it. it’s not his business.

 

( later, at the trial, watching kiyo’s sister wrap her arms around kiyo’s waist as she speaks, feeling bile rise into the back of his throat as the story unfolds, he wishes he had tried to learn. maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything. maybe this breaking was inevitable. but maybe he could have stopped three deaths if he had. )

 

ryoma wears it on his sleeve from the very first days they’re in here, stick of mint candy stuck in one side of his mouth and death wish hanging heavily in the dusty air of the academy. he says it so casually, like his life is a video game token - worthless except for this specific, situational currency.

 

he’s tired, tired, so tired, and makes no effort to hide it. doesn’t wear a mask.

 

kokichi’s almost jealous. _why would you do that? don’t you know you’re weak? don’t you know you’re setting yourself up for them to hurt you?_ he almost wants to ask the other boy, wants to reach for one of the few people who’s ever been shorter than him and shake him by the shoulders, shake some common sense back into him.

 

but he supposes once you’ve given up everything, you give up _fear,_ as well. and while ryoma can do that, from amidst the grim cloud of his life, everything a blue-and-black monotony, there’s the deepset paranoid part of kokichi that builds up walls and lies and masks and riddles, hiding and running and hiding until he’s honestly not sure he could tell you the kind of person he was, deep down.

 

he doesn’t look too much into ryoma’s story, either. doesn’t try and help. when he watches the motive video and sees _there’s absolutely nobody waiting for you,_ he doesn’t say anything at all. doesn’t try and become someone for him. doesn’t ask about the people he killed or the ones who died around him. instead, he tells ryoma that maki has his, because that’s the truth, isn’t it? and that’s what people want from him, right?

 

( later, at the trial, he remembers _why_ he lies. he should have seen this coming. he _did_ see this coming. ryoma was a dead man walking from the day he had said that when their time was counting down. at some point, someone was going to take advantage of his apathy. he wonders whether kirumi would have found another victim, were the circumstances different, or if she would have tried at all. a question that will never be answered. )

 

maki is the kind of person kokichi pretends to be. maki is the kind of person kokichi, at one point in his life, _wanted_ to be, _tried_ to be - cold and calculating, all deadly sharp edges and armor and burning red eyes.

 

maki _loathes_ him, and kokichi knows as much.

 

he knows something is true but not true from the first time she states her title as the ultimate child caregiver, because he’s _long_ known now the difference between the truth and a lie and the odd beast that’s neither and both at the same time, and knows that falls somewhere into the last category. he’s been through the system himself, he knows that it’s probably very likely she _did_ take care of kids at some point - her anecdotes, few and far between as they are, ring too true to be entirely fabricated.

 

but it’s not the whole truth, and he _knows_ it isn’t, and a bitter part of him wants to tear open her armor and leave her vulnerable in front of the others, because he’s _jealous_. she’s cold and isolated from the group, and scary enough that she gets away with it.

 

 _liars know liars,_ he thinks, wheezing for breath as he massages his throat from where she’d dropped him, unceremoniously, to the cobblestones. _can’t hide that anymore. we’re on equal ground, now._ the looks of suspicion are all directed towards _her_ now.

 

he doesn’t ask about her. he doesn’t want to know where that steel comes from. doesn’t want to know how she’d managed to gain what he couldn’t, doesn’t want to know why they trust _her_ when she’s been lying to them just as much as he has this whole time, doesn’t want to know anything more about her than he has to for survival.

 

( later, he stares up at the exisal, pain blossoming through him and turning his vision woozy, turning her into a column of righteous, blurry fire, and he realizes that what he _thought_ was enough might not be after all. he wonders if this is her revenge. he stripped her bare of all her lies, and she shot him, spun his plan into action far before it should be - stripped away his own attempted cruelty and false title of mastermind. quid pro quo. )

 

shuichi seems like he could be a poster child for depression, honestly, when they first meet, literally trailing behind in kaede’s shadow, voice barely capable of raising above a murmur, shoulders driven forwards and spine hunched as though he can protect himself by curling in on himself.

 

kokichi knows the type. how many of them in dice had been just like that?

 

but he clings to kaede, looks at her as though she’s hung the stars, and he _knows,_ he _knows,_ that it’ll crash and burn. deifying people never leads to anything but harsh disappointment and schisming. so he becomes the focal point, pushing the group over the edge they refuse to acknowledge they need to cross. it’s for the best.

 

he hides in his room for three days after kaede’s death, and all kokichi can think is that he saw it coming.

 

he didn’t predict how _clever_ shuichi would be once he’s forced to step up, though, the sharpness in his eyes a perfect counterbalance to his own. he doesn’t ever really talk about his past, and it doesn’t seem like it was too bad of one, but kokichi knows that these kind of things never have a _reason_ for happening. depression isn’t picky, after all.

 

he likes to think that in some odd way, they’re friends.

 

not that he’d ever say that, beyond a joke. not that he’d ever allow someone that far past his walls, not in this sort of situation, not after this short of a time, not with someone so close to those who look at him with contempt.

 

 _you’ll always be alone, kokichi,_ shuichi tells him, and kokichi can’t help but think _don’t i know it._

 

( his final bet all rests on him. ironically, one of the first times here that he’s trusted someone is after his death, praying as the press comes down that shuichi’s brain won’t fail them, because it hasn’t yet - that he’ll be able to piece things together quickly enough to figure out what they’re trying to achieve, that he’ll be able to end the game. )


End file.
